Higher Adoption is Where the True Value of Optimization Lies

Today, Sourcing Innovation (SI) released it’s latest optimization paper, sponsored by Keelvar, on Optimization: Higher Adoption is Where True Value Lies (registration required).

As SI has said repeatedly, optimization is the ultimate sourcing strategy, but optimization is still grossly under-utilized. And this is a crying shame. Because of this, an honest appraisal of its failure to become the de-facto standard approach in all mature Procurement functions is overdue. That’s why, unlike most of SI’s papers to date, this paper looks at the softer side of optimization and starts out by taking a look at why adoption rates are historically low before discussing what is changing in the marketplace and how a radical increase in adoption could be just around the corner. An increase in adoption that is sorely needed if the true value of optimization is to be realized.

So, while previous papers focussed on defining complex sourcing and what comes next, this paper focusses on what is critical to drive adoption: the needs of the average buyer and supplier. It discusses the need for flexibility, speed, and simplicity above feature-bloat and power. The need for user-friendliness over functionality (as only a few categories require the full power of today’s optimization engines). The myths that have been holding you back. And what a modern platform needs to increase adoption not only by Procurement organizations but, more importantly, by users within a Procurement organization. The maximum value is obtained when everyone uses the optimization-backed sourcing platform. Not just a few super-users.

We discuss, for example, how a platform that supports an instant analysis after each RFP is submitted that presents the lowest total cost of ownership taking all costs, capacities, and business constraints into account provides a buyer with considerable value as the buyer can go straight to negotiations, or contracting. These new platforms prevent the buyer from having to waste countless hours on side-by-side comparison reports and off-line analysis to identify the best buy for the organization. This usability allows the platform to be applied to every category, which not only gets more spend under management, but, at the end of the day, pushes more savings straight to the bottom line.

SI strongly recommends that you download Optimization: Higher Adoption is Where True Value Lies (Registration Required) today and then, if you don’t have such a platform, do something about acquiring such a platform.

For example, the vendors who have a true optimization-backed platform will happily demonstrate the power of their platforms on one or more categories you have run in the past. Pick a direct or indirect category (not transportation or packaging, every optimization vendor can do these over-analyzed categories well) where you’ve had issues due to stakeholders not being happy, actual savings being far less than expected, supplier relationships fraying, etc. Then, contact one of the few optimization-powered sourcing solution providers, provide your data, define your constraints, and watch them demonstrate in a matter of minutes how much you could have saved.

But since that won’t be enough, because every CXO says you could always do better in hindsight, kick-off a low-cost paid trial (see SI’s previous post on why paid pilots are the future) on a few jointly-selected current, critical, categories that typically hide large savings opportunities that the organization has never been able to tease out. As the provider helps you run these events on their turn-key SaaS cloud-based offerings, you’ll quickly see the power, the ease, and the real-world results that you can use to build an internal case for acquisition of an unlimited platform license that will quickly be followed by mass adoption. And since it doesn’t cost six (or even seven) figures to get started anymore, there’s no reason not to do it.

Four Hundred Years Ago Today …

The Catholic Church attempts to return the world to the Dark Ages when they ban Nicolaus Copernicus’ book: De revolutionibus orbium coelestium where he puts forward the correct heliocentric theory that the Sun is the centre of our solar system (which was essentially the known Universe at that time).

And while he was not the first to do so, as Aristarchus of Samos had posited such a theory almost 1,900 years earlier, it was the seminal work on the matter during the Renaissance and one of the most detailed as Copernicus went to great detail to reconcile the known orbits of the planets with his heliocentric model. The only drawback of Copernicus’ model (published in 1543) was that he held onto the circular orbits of the Ptolemaic system (that put the earth at the centre), something not corrected until Kepler posited that the orbits were actually elliptical in 1609.

Technology Sustentation 80: The Cloud

As SI said in our post on technology damnation 80, software was good. Hosted ASP was better. True multi-tenant SaaS was better still. But the “cloud” is, more often than not, the one step back that follows the two-steps forward.

The cloud is not a white fluffy cloud full of day dreams, it is a gathering storm cloud that could soon erupt and flood your entire operation while the hail it dispenses pummels you to a bloody pulp.

As per our damnation post, if you are not careful, you could:

  • lose your mail,
  • lose your data,
  • lose your platform, and
  • lose your customers as well as
  • lose your supply chain visibility,
  • lose your revenue stream, and
  • lose all the cash in your bank account

And you could be permanently lost at sea when the floods carry you away.

Unless, of course, you take precautions. What kind of precautions?

  1. Make sure that your providers’ platforms are designed in such a way that not only is there no data cross-pollination, but that there is no access cross-pollination. This may require that the provider not only create a new instance for each client, but run it on a new virtual machine. (The database can be on one server, as long as it’s encrypted and the encryption for each client uses a unique key so that if a hacker gets through to the database through another client’s poor security configuration, and gets all the data, your data can’t be decrypted.)
  2. Make sure that the provider supports encryption across all of your data, not just parts of it, and that it is up to date (and up to snuff). Even data that might be considered inconsequential can be enough to be damaging if enough bits of it are pieced together.
  3. Make sure the provider does near-real time incremental, replicated, distributed, off-site back-ups to make sure that, in the case of hardware failure (or FBI/NSA server seizure), your data is not lost.
  4. Make sure the provider has multiple real-world data centres that the platform can be run on in case one (or more) data centres become unavailable.
  5. Make sure the provider has a distributed fault-tolerant up-time monitoring solution that can detect if an application instance becomes unavailable and restore the most recent back-up to a different data centre and do the necessary re-routings in (near) real time.

In other words, security, fault-tolerance, and distributed processing and back-up are critical. Without it, you’ll be hacked, your system will go down, and you may not get it (or even your data) back.

Influential Sustentation 95: Competitors

I know this appears to be an oxymoron, but competitors do sustain you. Without competitors, there is no validation for your product, your market, and even your existence. But this isn’t a blog about Sales, this is a blog about Procurement. Believe it or not, competitors also help to sustain your Procurement practice. And we’ll get to that, but first we need to discuss the damnation that competitors can be.

Competitors are an outright damnation to the whole organization. Marketing makes an announcement, your competitors try to one up. Sales signs a great customer, your competitors try to weasel into the customer’s good graces through the backdoor. Your R&D makes a great discovery, and here comes the corporate espionage. But from a Procurement point of view, they are also damning.

  • They compete for limited supply and drive prices up.
  • They compete for limited talent and drive prices up.
  • They compete for limited expert (technology) resource time.

Ouch! How can they possibly be a sustentation. Well, this is an example of where when the going gets tough, the tough gets going.

Your Procurement can wallow in self-pity every time the competition scoops up a limited supply at a great price before you, steals the talent you want, or gets the top expert at the systems integrator to work on their project first, or you can recognize that anything they can do you can do better. And here’s where you start.

  • Monitor the market constantly, on-line, and in real-time to not only detect the rare occasions when forward auctions get listed (because a competitor went out of business or overbought and has to dump), but to detect events that could impact supply. If a natural disaster wipes out a significant portion of supply, then the market is just going to get tighter and having advance knowledge of the pending crunch can allow you to stock up on inventory early and cut your competitor off, or at least get pre-crunch prices locked in.
  • Invest in and understand the talent market, what each generation wants, and put together comprehensive work-life balance packages that will be more attractive than a competitor who merely promises a slightly above market salary (and nothing else).
  • Make sure to negotiate up-front sufficient access to any resources you will need, guaranteed milestone dates on the integration project, and penalties for non-performance.

There are other things you can do, but if you start here, you will suffer less supply crunches, attract more talent, and get your projects done on time. And this is a great start.